Maged Hassan’s PLAB 2 Experience
(This post was originally published on 26th February 2017. It was added to my blog by taking permission from the writer. Thank you, Dr. Maged Hassan, for allowing me to add your post to this blog)
Hello all. I just passes PLAB 2 last week. The reason I am writing this, is because I was looking for someone with similar experience when I was preparing for the exams. I did NOT attend any academies because I could not afford neither the time nor the money. So it’s doable, but you need to put a lot of effort. In my opinion you need:
a. a motivated study partner to practice the stations with (I had an excellent partner). At least 80% of the exam depends on how you talk to patients – procedures are only small part.
b. access to info about the most recent stations – they repeat alot from previous exams.
c. use whichever notes you can find, but ALWAYS check the accuracy of the information from reliable UK sources like NICE, patient.com or NHS choices.
d. it considerably helps if you know colleagues in different departments who can show how to perform examinations (opthalmoscopy, neurological examination, etc).
e. there are plenty of channels on youtube where you can find demonstration of procedures/examinations (geeky medics are excellent).
f. make your own notes – this was extremely helpful for revision in the last few days. for each topic I wrote down important points about DD, important questions, key points in managements, key steps in examinations, etc. from all different sources.
In a previous edit of the post I wrote that my notes are available if someone needs them. Actually these are handwritten and not organized that much and only cover the sixty sth stations that featured in the exams of last 4 months. I will try to scan them into a pdf file and upload to the group. A friend asked for the hardcopy which I will give to him.
And good luck for all future plabbers.